


photoperiodism

by hyperphonic



Category: Naruto
Genre: Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, F/M, Introspective Sasuke, Rating May Change, Uchiha Sasuke-centric, no beta we die like men, rating did change, sasuke is in love and also an idiot (what's new), the author clearly just wanted to write about olfactory memory and lovesick sasuke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:47:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26569795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperphonic/pseuds/hyperphonic
Summary: Sasuke’s reintegration into Konoha is a faltering, nonlinear process: it starts with the transition from summer to autumn, leaves turning from green to gold along with the tension draining from overworked muscles.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke
Comments: 22
Kudos: 93





	1. autumn (part one)

**Author's Note:**

> **working title:** ss in the year of our lord 2020  
>  **holy shit:** what a year it has been. pls join me in the fic i've been using to escape when it's all a little too much (aka every second of every day).  
>  **disclaimer:** i don't own _shit_ (no really i don't).

Autumn in Konoha smells like leaf rot and damp air; a kind of scent that hangs heavy in Sasuke’s nose no matter how far he strays from his native village, coffin strapped resolutely across his back. The broad, waxy leaves of Fire country go redder than their native land’s namesake as the year marches on towards Naruto’s birthday, and like the shadows that draw long all around him, Sasuke feels his chest start to ache with the loneliness. He likes the copses that dance with golden leaves best, the last Uchiha decides one sunny September morning, and if perhaps that is because of the friend their color reminds him of then he simply does not dwell on it. Inversely, he is forced to acknowledge that night as he keeps watch over Hebi’s prone forms, in the spring he most likes those groves of trees that riot with pink flowers.

(He _definitely_ does not dwell on that).

By the time the worn down soles of Hebi’s sandals cross over the Land of River’s border, Sasuke almost cannot breathe for the smell of leaf rot in his nose. Lush forest sprawls out across the Eastern edge of the country, gone orange and gold in the watery October sunlight, a canopy of warm autumnal colors above their weary heads. It’s a quiet morning, each member of the ragtag team holding their breath in against the mid autumn chill as they wait for the sun to offer some substantial warmth. Sasuke tries to focus on the dew that collects atop the straps of his sandals while they walk, uses the clammy sensation of toes wet with a night’s worth of respiration to ground himself against the too-pervasive smell of decomposing leaves. It doesn’t work well enough to beat back all of the visions, and so he resigns himself to the memories as they wash over him (late autumn chill biting at his fingers, a navy blue sky contrasted against the fluorescent yellow of Konoha’s streetlamps, Sakura’s eyes still beautiful even washed out by the harsh yellow cast).

Those same memories follow him into sleep that night, curling around the edges of his vision as Suigetsu takes up his watch. Konoha’s proximity makes the fine hairs on his forearms stand up, and every inhalation brings unwelcome memories with it as Sasuke tries to focus past the flashes of pink hair he keeps seeing in his peripheral ( _just ghosts. Old olfactory memory_ ). They prowl around the edges of his too-sharp vision that night as Sasuke sits up alone with the last few embers of their campfire, resentful manifestations with eyes the same color of green as spring leaves.

When Sasuke dreams, it’s in those same colors: petal pink, the particular bright green of waxy Konoha leaves bursting back into life, ivory skin. These visions he welcomes with open arms, finds that the best sleep comes with those nights where his mind allows a brief, shampoo scented reprieve (he tries, and fails, not to overanalyze the fact that he remembers what her shampoo smells like). They’re far better than the alternative, at least: nights spent bathed in _Mangekyō_ colors, or quiet shades of grey and purple as he holds a blade’s edge to the only throat he’s ever wanted to bruise with his lips.

Familiar leaf rot and any unwelcome memories tied to the scent of it grow weaker and weaker as Hebi’s path winds away from the Land of Fire, until Sasuke can almost breathe normally in the Land of Silk. Earth country is uncharacteristically full of foliage at its’ Southern border, and as Hebi ascends the ridgeline dividing Earth from the Land of Caves the only sounds that punctuate the passage of time are the snap of loose linens whipping back and forth in the unsettled alpine air and the crunch of scree beneath their sandals. As they approach the head of the pass they will descend into Earth the wind picks up in intensity, grabbing at loose clothing and dirty hair alike to drown out any sound at all besides its roar. Sasuke likes being up at elevation like this, enjoys the feeling of too thin air filling his tired lungs (relishes the way he feels so far removed from all of the horrors he’s experienced at sea level like this). When they reach the head of the pass the only smell that hangs high and bright in Sasuke’s nose is that of the snow that has already begun to dust the peaks above them. The last Uchiha inhales deeply, and thinks that he has finally escaped the too familiar smell that’s haunted him across the continent (or one of them, at least).

He is proven wrong when the scent of leaf rot and fresh rain wafts up to him on cool mountain air just hours later as they begin their descent. What feels like ancient, Genin memory swells up with the scent, and Sasuke is reminded of days spent pouring over maps of the Shinobi Nations. To the northwest lies the little nation of Sakura.

Sasuke wonders if she was named for the country, or if the similarity is just happenstance.

Bodies, he has come to learn, remember things: memory stitched into the fibers of lean muscle and hidden away within osteons, the kind of memory that follows where he goes. It isn’t worth fighting, the way Sasuke cannot escape the green of his teammate’s eyes, or the way it had felt to share sleepy autumn mornings stretching safely out of the rain beneath towering oaks with Sakura and Naruto. When he closes his eyes at night, weary to the bone and aching for the comforting smell of green tea on an overcast day, Sasuke dreams of soft lips speaking against his temple. There’s no point in wondering as to who the lips belong, only one person has ever wound their way against his ribs in such a way as to live in his dreams like this.

(The last Uchiha tries not to focus overly on the fact that he had threatened to kill her).

Now, as he leans against the slick wall of some dilapidated ( _forgotten_ ) monument a few weeks after their descent from the mountain pass and its sharp, cold air, Sasuke inhales the smell of not-quite-right leaf rot and lets a kind of sadness he really only entertains when he toes the line between sleep and wakefulness take hold. They’re deep within the Land of Frost, dangerously close to tree line, where the cold-beaten mountain conifers curl in on themselves in an attempt to weather winter winds, and the misty spaces between trunks seem to swim with spirits unseen. Sasuke thinks he’d rather like these silent forests with their cold mist and still air if it weren’t for the incessant feeling of being watched, or the way the heavy air trapped beneath their boughs presses cool silence against his eardrums.

It’s too easy to think, in the quiet.

In his head he has told her a thousand times: spread the tragedy of his family out on the baked sandstone between them and watched as Sakura’s face went soft in that way it did only for him. In each iteration of this same, fanciful dream, Sasuke’s admission is met with cool hands against his cheeks, and Sakura’s mouth tastes like freshly brewed green tea when she kisses him.

It’s a luxury, to consider that he might be the one to recount the reason for his family’s death to her. If Sasuke has done one thing over the last three years of his life, it’s relinquish his claim to any level of luxury. So he leans against the mossy monument with the weight of Sakura’s attempt on his life in the thick, curling mist and reasons that he cannot fault her, for wanting to kill him with that knowledge tucked under her belt.

He doesn’t pause to consider that she might not yet know at all.

It’s Suigetsu who finds him like that, uncharacteristically quiet as he joins his de facto leader in unspoken vigil. The silence they share stretches out between the trees for what feels like miles, lit only by what little light breaks through the incoming fog from their campfire.

Sasuke is sure the shorter man is only here to seek some respite from their female teammate, doesn’t care to let himself consider the fact that he might actually appreciate the company a little anyways ( _certainly_ doesn’t care to let himself consider the myriad ways this new team of his so echoes the one he’d left behind along with the smell of autumn in Konoha). The two men stand in silence for the better part of an hour, shoulders drawn up against the late autumn chill as it begins to rain.

(Sasuke doesn’t sleep that night.)

War smells like this: pulverized sandstone charged by his _Chidori_ as it clings to his blade _,_ the heavy iron of blood ground into cracked earth. When it’s over, all Sasuke can smell is petrichor, his own blood where it leaks onto the granite beneath him, and Sakura’s shampoo as she bows low over his chest, hands alight with green chakra.

Sasuke’s reintegration into Konoha is a faltering, nonlinear process. It starts with the transition from summer to autumn, leaves turning from green to gold along with the tension draining from overworked muscles. He spends his days adjusting to life without an arm, and his nights shoulder to shoulder with the rest of Team Seven at Ichiraku’s. By the time the trees have begun to drop their leaves, Sasuke has added new pillars to his routine: evenings spent waiting across the street from Konoha Hospital for Sakura to exit the too-clean double doors, and nights spent with blankets that smell like her around his shoulders as they sit up on her roof late into the night. 

His first night back within the mossy walls of the Uchiha compound Sasuke cannot breathe past the scent of gravesoil in his nose and throat. It’s so oppressive that he finds himself sitting on the stoop of his childhood home, head bowed and shoulders steadily slumping as the light rain characteristic of Konoha in early autumn begins to fall. Sasuke counts the seconds between breaths and erratic heart beats, tries to focus on the way the rain feels on the nape of his neck; anything other than the weight of the phantom stares that bore into his back. The rain increases in intensity, drumming a casket rhythm into the worse for wear shingles of his childhood home, and Sasuke continues in silence to try and soothe himself through the almost-panic.

It doesn’t work.

When Sakura finds him the next morning, it is ashen eyed and shivering in watery dawn light.

“Sasuke-kun,”

Sasuke feels some long forgotten knot of tension release at the endearment.

“Let’s go home.”

And so Sakura Haruno leads him along soon to frost paths out of his family’s grave and into the cloistered warmth of her living room.

Sakura’s apartment smells like coffee, freshly cut flowers, and the faintest trace of antiseptic from the hospital. It’s a warm, homey kind of scent that sings a low counterpoint to the sharp scent of hard frost that rushes in every time one of them opens the door. It’s been a day and a half since Sakura had found him on the doorstep of his childhood home, and in those thirty six hours Sasuke’s shoulders have only just begun to relax down and away from his ears.

When Sasuke kisses Sakura for the first time, he closes his eyes and remembers the weight of the waterfall he had stood under in Kiri. Stepping out from underneath the spray and into warm, golden sun had felt the exact same way as this (except nowhere near as good, or so long a time coming). Sakura’s fists, so powerful and well trained, curl tightly into the loose fabric of his shirt, hitching the hem across his stomach a little higher along with the breath in his throat as her lips open up beneath his tongue. It strikes him that though he would never like to spend so long as another four years building up to a kiss with her again, perhaps this was worth it.

Her fingers thread through the damp hair at the back of his neck, and Sasuke knows there’s no doubt to it at all.


	2. winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is learning how not to hate Konoha. 
> 
> Sakura makes it easier, shows him how every day she stumbles blearily into the kitchen to rest her cheek against his shoulder blade and hide cold fingers in his armpits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **well:** here we are, chapter two of five (for now).  
>  **lmao y'all will never guess:** i made it exactly one (1) chapter before bumping the rating up to mature lmao. be mindful of such– and don't be too surprised if i bump up one more time teehee ;)  
>  **if you wanna b my lover:** slash want updates on fic progress, to hear my tiny little thoughts as they flit across my brain, or just to hang out, you can do all of the above (and more!) on twitter @HYPERPH0NIC.  
>  **disclaimer:** still don't own anything, nope

Autumn gives way to winter with a cool sigh and the sprawl of frost across sandstone. Sasuke notes the change as he rises before the sun each morning, moving slowly back and forth within Sakura’s cluttered kitchen. It’s been one month since the rosette had brought him out of mid-autumn rain and into her home, four weeks of acclimating to sharing space with another human again, twenty eight days of delicate tension drawn out between their ribcages like strands of the spider web that hangs in the corner of Sakura’s balcony awnings.

It’s not an unwelcome tension by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, Sasuke reflects as he pours boiling water into the teapot Ino had given Sakura for her nineteenth birthday, he might even relish it more than he does late nights spent at Ichiraku’s with Team Seven and their backs to the growing cold. No, the collective breath held by himself and the woman he has loved for a little bit longer than he’s comfortable admitting is a warm one (warm enough to perhaps be channeled into a _Katon,_ which is a fact that makes the tips of Sasuke’s ears go pink if he dwells on it for too long).

He begins to mark the passage of time by bleary kisses shared in the morning while they wait for tea to steep, and the lingering moments just before bed when Sakura molds her body against his on the couch where she’ll eventually leave him for the plush white comforter of her bed. Today, her lips taste like toothpaste and rose balm when she rises up onto cold tiptoes to murmur good morning against his lower lip, a mixture so intoxicating the last Uchiha wastes no time in sweeping his tongue into her mouth to savor the taste. 

Learning how to live in a home again has been hard. Not bad, just hard. It’s a process filled with instances of tension so tight and hot that he struggles to breathe for the want of it (has to exhale through his lips like he’s pushing through a straw in order to keep his _Sharingan_ from activating in the brightly lit bathroom, Sakura’s pulse throbbing visibly against smooth skin). Cheerily painted walls with their assortment of team photos and hanging plants feel less like a prison than they did in October, but as November draws on, Sasuke still struggles not to feel like a bird in a cage.

He has come to realize that the hazy hours between dinner and bed are some of his least favorite. Perhaps it is the knowledge that in just a handful of minutes he’ll be left to his own thoughts with the only moderately comfortable arm of Sakura’s couch beneath his head, while the very woman who occupies nearly every waking thought he has sleeps just a few paces down the hall. Or perhaps it is simply the fact that once Sakura’s nearly silent steps fade down the hallway the apartment descends into a silence so dense it’s almost too heavy to breathe through. Either way, each night the quiet presses down on Sasuke’s eardrums too heavily, and he can feel his gaze elongating past the cream-colored walls to focus somewhere around the past four years of his life.

He is learning how not to hate Konoha.

Sakura makes it easier, shows him how every day she stumbles blearily into the kitchen to rest her cheek against his shoulder blade and hide cold fingers in his armpits. She and Ino have begun to collaborate on a children’s mental health clinic, a fact his housemate had dropped on him late one Monday night across a table covered in heavily annotated articles.

“Because I cannot ever let another child suffer like you and Naruto did.”

It takes a handful of heavy seconds for the last Uchiha to remember how to breathe. When he does, throat aching with the inhale, Sasuke reaches across the table to kiss her.

In all of his travels, Sasuke realizes he’d forgotten the simple pleasure of watching Konoha drift off to sleep beneath a blanket of snow. When the first few inches fall on an already drowsy Sunday afternoon, Sakura rushes to her bedroom to procure an armful of blankets before pulling Sasuke to sit just in front of the sliding glass doors between their living room and the balcony. Sakura tucks herself into the space between his arm and the wing of his ribcage before tugging her blankets over their shoulders, grin nearly blinding when he drops a kiss to the top of her head.

They stay like that for the rest of the afternoon.

By the time the sun begins its slow descent behind Hokage-iwa, the village is covered in at least five inches, and Sakura’s breathing is so even against his neck that Sasuke suspects she’s fallen asleep. A glance at their reflection in the window turned mirror confirms his suspicions, and the sight of Sakura with her nose tucked against the spot on his neck where Orochimaru’s curse mark had once sat like a brand makes his heart lurch unsteadily. In the end Sasuke decides not to move her, instead settling back against the side of her couch (his bed) so that Sakura can more comfortably sprawl across his lap. Snow continues to fall, lazily drifting down between the navy sky and the yellow wash of fluorescent streetlamps, Sasuke counts each flake until his own eyes slide shut.

When they wake in the morning it is to almost a foot of new snow, and the novel experience of limbs heavy with sleep tangled beneath their cocoon of blankets. The scent of Sakura’s shampoo fills Sasuke’s nose with each inhale from where it’s buried just above her temple: light and floral, exactly as he’d remembered it on so many lonely nights. His throat feels dry, skin a little too hot where his shirt has ridden up, allowing the fabric atop her back to rub against it with each slow inhale. Sasuke is painfully aware of every point of contact between them: her cheek rests on what’s left of his arm, calloused hands wrapped firmly around his forearm where it lies across her chest, his front flush against her back from shoulders to ankles.

Even if he’d still had both hands, he wouldn’t be able to count on his fingers the number of times he’d dreamt of this. Cold and lonely with his back against the trunk of a tree in Kiri, in the long shadowed hallways of Orochimaru’s research wing, half blind and hurting immediately after their confrontation in the Land of Iron (shame and hate and bile so thick on his tongue he could hardly breathe for it). His lips find purchase on the slope of one freckled shoulder to press a lingering kiss that feels more like a prayer against Sakura’s skin.

“Sasuke-kun.” Half asleep and breathy, Sakura accompanies the endearment with wriggle of her hips, slim fingers flexing against his arm.

Sasuke’s breathing all but stops.

He’s sure that once they’re sitting up and brewing tea his body will ache with a night spent asleep on the floor, but right now, with Sakura’s ass pressing back against his hips and the taste of her skin upon his lips there’s nothing farther from his mind. Unsure as to how best to escape from the situation before his body betrays him completely, Sasuke begins to pull his arm back from its spot draped lazily across her chest only to be stopped by an iron like grip.

“Sasuke-kun.” More cognizant this time, he watches with baited breath as Sakura’s eyes flutter open. Anxiety rushes up to cotton in his throat as Sasuke watches the sleep fade from green eyes with each bat of long lashes, but Sakura’s only response is a long, lazy stretch within his arms.

“G’morning.” Dry lips brush sweetly against his knuckles, Sasuke cannot help the trembling breath he releases against her ear.

“Morning.” He drops another kiss upon warm skin, this one just behind the shell of her ear, and the noise Sakura makes in response only increases the pace at which his blood rushes southward.

“My neck _hurts_ ,” Sasuke hums a low commiseration (his shoulders are unbearably stiff), “tonight we should make it to bed.”

Sakura is sitting up and grinning down at him before he fully registers what she’d just said.

November turns into December, which marches on until the winter solstice and its short, dark day. Their routine remains much the same: tea together in the morning, lunch shared atop the broad oak top of Sakura’s office desk (his afternoons are now spent preparing bento after late morning spars with Naruto), and evenings passed cooking together while Sakura details the events of her day. The biggest adjustment is that now Sasuke falls asleep in a bed that smells like clean sheets and shampoo– Sakura’s head resting comfortably atop his chest.

He very rarely dreams in _Mangekyō_ colors anymore. Instead, his dreams are bathed in the pale green color of Sakura’s sheets under late morning sun. These dreams leave him panting in the aftermath, heart racing wildly against the cage of his sternum when he jerks into consciousness. He’s getting very used to mornings spent breathing slowly in through his nose and out through his mouth, hip flexors twitching with each innocent shift of Sakura’s hips in her sleep. 

“You just need to jump in feet first.” Naruto nods sagely from the other side of training ground thirteen one chilly January morning, arms folded across his chest.

“Naruto.” A warning driven home by the soft sound of his hand as he signs his way through _Katon._

“Look I know you’ve both wanted it since like _literally_ four months ago. I don’t understand why you don’t just-” here his best friend pauses to waggle blond eyebrows suggestively, “ _do it._ ”

The Hokage-to-be barely dodges the inferno that tears across hard packed snow towards him.

“Okay, there’s _no need_ to go all scorched earth on me here bastard!” Naruto dances out of the way when Sasuke comes charging across the snow-turned-slush, a thousand birds chirping in his palm.

Later, when they’re both sprawled out on the only patch of snow left untouched by their training, Naruto heaves a long sigh into the unsettled air above them.

“Look, shitass.” Sasuke thinks it smells like it might be about to rain. “You just need to stop overthinking it.” Naruto sits up, cracks his neck. “You love her. She loves you. For fucks sake, you’ve been living together for the last almost four months, and only had eyes for one another since we were nine. Just _breathe_!”

The Last Uchiha doesn’t quite have anything to say.

A wet, warm wind blows in overnight, tearing through the village with hurricane force to melt all of the snow from Konoha’s multicolored rooftops. The storm rails against the thin glass of their windows, cheap glass bowing inward with the pressure of each wet gust. Sasuke revels in the wild weather, appreciates the way it mirrors the feeling in his chest, frenetic and too warm. Sakura knows, as she always seems to, that he’s working something over that night while they cook.

“Do you want to talk about it?” The only woman he’s ever loved asks, apron tied tight around her slim waist and collarbones rising gracefully up to kiss the ends of her hair. The power flickers, plunging their tiny kitchen into a fleeting darkness that has Sasuke’s tomoe spinning in response. Cool hands come up to cradle his cheeks, and Sasuke doesn’t bother to try and hide the way his breath tumbles across chapped lips when Sakura presses a gentle kiss to the skin just beneath his _Rinnegan_. 

“Sakura,” he takes his time with each syllable, flexes his palm against the dip of her waist before curling his arm around her to lift Sakura up and onto the counter. Her laugh is warm against his chin, but nothing compared to the heat of her mouth when he kisses her. “I love you.” Sakura gasps, breath catching in her throat when Sasuke takes the opportunity to slip his tongue past lips that taste like green tea and winter rain.

“I love you too,” the lights flicker again, Sakura wraps her arms around his neck, and Sasuke surreptitiously reaches over to turn off the stove.

They skip dinner that night.

**Author's Note:**

>  **here we are again:** HELLO! i'm rewatching naruto and clearly have a ton of EMOTIONS ABOUT IT. this will theoretically have three chapters, though i reserve the right to change that (hehe), and because it is me writing it, i ALSO reserve the right to bump the rating up ;) i've no set update schedule for this as i'm crumbling under the pressures of academic + research deadlines– but i'm writing this as a sweet little escape from the reality of things, so honestly i would expect updates to come quite frequently lmao.  
>  **that being said:** if you want to see snippets of this as i work on it/cry with me about ss/hang out and SUFFER together you can follow me on twitter @HYPERPH0NIC


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